The initiative coincides with a reframing of the "War on Terror" as "Overseas
Contingency Operations" -- seemingly acknowledging that the threat that
was is no longer what it was claimed so vigorously to be (Oliver
Burkeman, Obama
administration says goodbye to 'war on terror', The
Guardian, 25 March
2009). The strategy is to be rephrased by the USA using the bureaucratic expression
"overseas contingency operations". However, from a global strategic perspective,
since every country has its "overseas", "Overseas
Contingency Operations" would imply there is no longer any corresponding
internal threat requiring a focus on "homeland security" -- anywhere.

The argument in what follows focuses on the
context in which "terrorism" is
defined. This provides an introduction to the statistics of other threats
that are already as deadly in statistically terms, or may become so, or are
a source of terror in their own right.

Definitional game-playing

The name of the game has been changed yet again. The "War on Terror" which
was scheduled to last for generations -- like the 1000 Year Reich -- has been
reframed with the flick of an e-mail (Oliver Burkeman. War
on Terror is Over: overseas contingency operations. The Guardian,
26 March 2009 (posted online as Obama administration says goodbye to 'war
on terror': US defence department seems to confirm use of the bureaucratic phrase
'overseas contingency operations', 25 March 2009).

These terminological exercises, on
which there is no international consensus, have nevertheless provided every
possible justification for the introduction of invasive and repressive legislation
-- as many have documented. This is upheld as necessary for "national security"
-- without ever clarifying the dimensions of the threat. That information too
is a matter of "national security" and is therefore classified.

What is most curious is that it would appear unclear that there has been any
shared definition of "terrorism" amongst the Coalition of the Willing that
first intervened as a result of 9/11, or amongst NATO forces in subsequent
activities in Afghanistan, or in the various worldwide efforts to coordinate
responses in the "war on terror". What is much clearer is that an international
group effort was made to respond to the terminological confusion in a "theoretical
discussion" (Jeffrey L. Arnold, et al A
Proposed Universal Medical and Public Health Definition of Terrorism,
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, April - June 2003) concluding:

Although a myriad of definitions of terrorism have been advanced over the
years, virtually all of these definitions have been crisis centered, frequently
reflecting the political perspectives of those who seek to define it. In
this article, we deconstruct these previously used definitions of terrorism
in order to reconstruct a definition of terrorism that is consequence-centered,
medically relevant, and universally harmonized. A universal medical and public
health definition of terrorism will facilitate clinical and scientific research,
education, and communication about terrorism-related events or disasters.
We propose the following universal medical and public definition of terrorism:

The intentional use of violence -- real or threatened -- against
one or more non-combatants and/or those services essential for or protective
of their health, resulting in adverse health effects in those immediately
affected and their community, ranging from a loss of well-being or security
to injury, illness, or death.

Unfortunately, given the explicit "medical" focus of this excellent document,
it is unclear whether this definition effectively addresses the experiential
issue of "terror" as opposed to actions which it is considered to be convenient
to label by what is effectively a catch-all term, "terrorism" -- actions and
effects which might however be appropriately indicated by other classes of
labels for injury or fatality.

The report offers an extensive discussion of psychological harm, but it is
unclear how this might be assessed in the conventional collection of statistics
-- especially where "terror" may be associated with a "climate of fear" engendered
in a community. This is especially significant where the "climate of fear"
is engendered not by physical violence but by structural violence or by cultural
violence.

Johan Galtung (Violence,
Peace, and Peace Research, Journal of Peace Research,
1969) makes a vital distinction between physical violence and structural
violence. He argues that physical violence is for the amateur, using
weapons in order to dominate. For Galtung, structural violence is the tool
of the professional employing exploitation and social injustice to achieve
domination. In addition to "structural violence", Johan Galtung (Cultural
Violence, Journal of Peace Research, 1990) has defined "cultural
violence" as any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize violence
in its direct or structural form. Symbolic violence built into a culture
does not kill or maim like direct violence or the violence built into the
structure. Clearly both these forms of violence can induce terror but that terror,
even as "psychological harm" may not be adequately recognized within the
proposed definition of "terrorism".

It might be appropriate to conclude that definitions of "terrorism" --
or even its name -- are modified by political forces to demonstrate a level
of threat and/or strategic success in responding to it. Further modifications
are made to the definition if the strategy is not working. Governments can
therefore make problems "disappear" by conceptual gerrymandering
-- as with the transmogrification of "war on terror" into the strategy
against "violent
extremism" (or extremism alone), or into "overseas contingency operations".

There is a further vexatious political issue, as yet completely unresolved,
namely that most independence movements are typically labelled as "terrorist"
prior to their success -- including those of the USA, France and Israel. Thereafter
the "terrorists" are accorded every honour and courtesy as fully-fledged members
of the international community. It is their predecessors who are then labelled
"dictators" (and the like) -- although not "terrorists". Such processes could
prove to be a real challenge for longer-term diachronic studies of "terrorism".

Strategic priorities in the art of governance

The argument has been made that strategy elaboration and implementation in
a global or national context is immeasurably simplified when a single
unambiguous threat can be identified as requiring urgent action. Reservations
and niceties can then be set aside -- checks and balances can be abandoned.
The response to a single threat then becomes the preferred decision-making
mode. This is a feature of decision avoidance in response to complex sets of
issues (The Art of Non-Decision-Making -- and the manipulation
of categories,
1997).

However, whilst attention has been so vigorously devoted to the threat of
"terrorism" to "national security" in a global society, it is especially intriguing
that a globalized economy has become the victim of a cataclysmic disaster
-- arising in the country most strategically preoccupied with "terrorism" and
most threatened by it. The economy and livelihoods of that country have been
undermined to a degree never imagined as resulting from terrorism.

More curious is that despite the learnings supposedly to be derived from the
failure of the intelligence community to detect and prevent 9/11, and its
failures to detect the absence of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, somehow
that intelligence community has subsequently proved to be incapable of detecting
the threats to the financial system and the severity of its economic consequences.
As argued elsewhere, these consequences might be seen as the "achievement"
of the superior strategy of parties inimical to globalization and its proponents.
In effect, those preoccupied with the strategic threat framed as primary --
namely "terrorism" -- "took their eyes off the ball" of globality and its sustaining
processes (Engaging
with Globality -- through cognitive lines, circlets, crowns or holes, 2009).

However, to the extent that ensuring the collapse of the global financial
system is to be understood as a deliberate initiative (however inadvertent)
resulting from extreme risk-taking, it is quite extraordinary the extent to
which efforts have been made to reward such "extremism" by payments
beyond the dreams of most. Even more extraordinary is the failure to associate
disastrous results greater than any "terrorist" might have hoped to achieve
with a form of "terrorism" -- of "higher dimensionality" -- which has escaped
the definitional games by which "terrorism" and "extremism" are framed
(Cognitive
Ballistics vs. Derivative Correlation in Memetic Warfare: suicide bombing as
a weapon of mass distraction? 2009).

Plaintively it is claimed that such payments are
contractual obligations -- as though any destructive act could be legally excused
provided it was covered by an appropriate contract -- a sort of "007 licence
to destroy". Could those narrowly defined as "terrorists" -- or the Eichmann's
of the future -- defend themselves in this way? As a corrective, the possibility
of framing extreme financial risk-taking as coming within the provisions of
anti-terrorist legislation is discussed elsewhere (Extreme
Financial Risk-taking as Extremism: subject to anti-terrorism legislation? 2009).

Claiming appropriate governance by continual reframing of reality

Given the leadership offered over the period during with the "war on terror"
has been escalated, it is appropriate to learn from the new understanding of
the strategic reality of world leadership.

One possibility is indicated
by the neocon strategy of governance as presented by Ron Suskind (Without
a Doubt, The New York Times, In The Magazine, 17 October
2004) following an exchange he had with an aide in the decision-making circle
of President Bush:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based
community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions
emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded
and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He
cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore,''
he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our
own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as
you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can
study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors
. . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Many people are now studying the aftermath of the financial
disaster. It remains unclear who were "history's actors" engaged in creating
their "own reality".

Is reframing the "war on terror" to be seen in this light? Has
its role as strategic "chewing gum lost it's flavour" and capacity to offer
coherence -- its "sticking capacity"?

The question in relation to threats such as "terrorism" is how
such creative shifting of definitions of priority threats is simply to be understood
as an inherent feature of strategic misleadership and incompetence in governance
(Emergence
of a Global Misleadership Council: misleading as vital to governance of the
future? 2007). Is the "creative accounting" characteristic of corporate
scandals such as Enron to be seen as matched by the "creative defining" of
governance?

Confirmation of such a possibility is to be found in the politicization
of statistics -- the "massaging" of official statistics that government
can ensure. The most concrete examples are to be found in the massaging of
statistics regarding "unemployment". Analogous massaging is to be
found with respect to threshold levels of environmental pollution.

If governance currently only "works" in response to a singular challenge,
it is then useful to explore how various challenges have been successively
taken up and effectively abandoned: development, environment, global warming,
energy, terrorism, etc. The "moving finger writes, and having writ moves
on"
-- leaving a trail of underfinanced, ineffectual bureaucracies trailing the
imperial court in its quest for relevance. New threats must be nourished such
as pandemics, asteroids, sun spot storms, extraterrestrials, and the like --
each able to displace its precedents as being irrelevant to the immediate challenge
of the future.

Especially problematic is the degree to which a multi-definitional reality
is taking hold. Many are left defined and trapped within categories that have
been operationally superseded by "history's actors" -- in neocon
terms. Just as the current challenge for the frozen credit system is to get
banks to lend to each other to recover global liquidity, so it might be said
that the conceptual challenge is to "unfreeze the categories" in
which most of society is trapped in order to enable a more fluid response to
the challenges of the future (
Framing
the Global Future by Ignoring Alternatives: unfreezing categories as a vital
necessity, 2009)

Demonisation and sorcery: the sorcerer's advantage

As has been noted, governance works well when there is a clearly defined "enemy"
-- especially one that is recognizable through computer profiling and weapons
targeting. The Taliban could not be better suited to this purpose. The renewed
effort in Afghanistan may be appreciated in these terms.

However the challenge is more complex. For governance to acquire credibility
it is vital that any enemy be adequately demonised. This is a well-recognized
requirement of psychological
operations as used by military forces. It is important
to be able to associate an image of unspeakable horror with a suitable enemy.
The West has been endeavouring to do this with respect to Islam over centuries.
Framing a "clash of civilizations"
is but the latest round of this endeavor.

This must however be carefully done. For example, in focusing on the extremely
regrettable condition of women in Afghanistan, it is import to isolate any
such presentations from those in other Islamic countries who happen, currently,
to be allies -- where such practices may be just as extreme. It is also vital
to draw attention to the condition of women in the West -- within living memory
-- when the constraints on women would now be considered totally unacceptable.

But the main requirement of demonisation is to engender a nebulous, "evil"
aura around the enemy as a source of unspeakable threat.

Although concern is occasionally expressed about "demonisation",
almost no attention is given to those engender such "demons". It
is typically the task, in advanced societies, of security services responsible
for "psychological
operations" and propaganda. Doc security services have departments or
files labelled "demonisation"? What is ironic is the parallel with
the activity of sorcerers and witches as archetypal roles in primitive traditional
societies. Perhaps more ironic is the use of the term "spooks" to
refer to members of the intelligence community.

Most significant in this parallel is the manner in which the
sorcerer defines what is "taboo". He too must create an aura of threat
associated with the infringement of taboo. The parallel between his "evil
spirits" --
which only he is free to name and know about -- and "terrorists" is
striking. He is free to label any disastrous incident to which the community
is exposed as the action of evil spirits -- then to be placated through his
good offices, and the contribution of appropriate resources. Whereas scientists
may scornfully challenge such beliefs as "superstition" -- as overlaying
reality with an imagined belief system -- the sorcerer can continue successfully
to cultivate that belief. The extent of this success is notably to be seen
in West Africa.

Of course if the credibility of the sorcerers case tends to weaken, the canny
sorcerer can arrange for some form of incident to refocus the attention of
the community. Typically such fabrication is unnecessary because there are
enough incidents which can simply be reframed as having been provoked by evil
spirits.

The main international source of official statistics on terrorism is the USA.
The main difficult with this source is that the definition of "terrorism" on
the basis of which statistics were collected has been modified over the years
-- as noted by various commentators. As a result of 9/11, the USA undertook
to modify the provisions of the WHO classification system -- with the National
Center for Health Statistics designating terrorism as a new classification
of death.. However this means there is no consistent statistical series regarding
"terrorism" (as discussed in Terrorism:
Tracking The Deaths, 2002).

Classification of the deaths and injuries that occurred as the result of
the events of September 11, 2001, presented CDC's National Center for Health
Statistics (NCHS) with a dilemma. Under the current classification systems
for mortality and morbidity, the World Health Organization's International
Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) and the United States' International
Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM),
deaths and injuries associated with acts of terrorism could not be identified
uniquely.

According to NCTC definition, terrorism occurs when groups
or individuals acting on political motivation deliberately or recklessly
attack civilians/non-combatants or their property and the attack does not
fall into another special category of political violence, such as crime,
rioting, or tribal violence. For further guidance on criteria, see Methodology.

Because of the change in methodology during 2004, the NCTC
data is only comparable starting with the 2005 calendar year data

Incidents of Terrorism
Worldwide

2005

2006

2007

Terror attacks worldwide

11,156

14,570

14,499

Attacks resulting in at least one death, injury, or kidnapping

8,032

11,322

11,125

Attacks resulting in at least one death

5,137

7,434

7,258

Attacks resulting in the death of zero people

6,019

7,136

7,241

Attacks resulting in the death of only one person

2,882

4,142

3,993

Attacks resulting in the death of at least 10 people

227

295

355

Attacks resulting in the injury of at least one person

3,839

5,798

6,259

Attacks resulting in the kidnapping of at least one person

1,154

1,349

1,158

People killed, injured or kidnapped as a result of terror attacks

74,309

75,211

72,066

People worldwide killed as a result of terror attacks

14,616

20,872

22,685

People worldwide injured as a result of terror attacks

24,853

38,455

44,310

People worldwide kidnapped as a result of terror attacks

34,840

15,884

5,071

Monty G. Marshall. Global
Terrorism: an overview and analysis. INSCR Integrated Network
for Societal Conflict Research CIDCM Center for International Development
and Conflict Management University of Maryland, College Park and the Center
for Systemic Peace 11 September 2002

This is an open-source database presenting information on terrorist events
around the world since 1970 (currently updated through 2004), including data
on where, when, and how each of almost 80,000 terrorist events occurred.

Provides a valuable compilation from official statistics of: international
terrorism incidents, international terrorism fatalities, and international
terrorism injuries -- over the period 1968 to 2007 -- commenting on the
implications of the multiple changes of definition

Statistics on terrorism -- challenged

The official statistics have been challenged, notably by a group at the School
for International Studies of the Simon Fraser University (Vancouver).

Challenging the expert consensus that the threat of global terrorism is
increasing, the Human Security Brief 2007 reveals a sharp net decline
in the incidence of terrorist violence around the world.

Fatalities from terrorism have declined by some 40 percent, while the loose-knit
terror network associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda has suffered a
dramatic collapse in popular support throughout the Muslim world.

It has become a truism that any attempt to define or quantify terrorism
is informed by political trends, and thus subject to fluctuations based not
on hard facts but on political fashion. Yet the State Department's
now defunct annual publication, Patterns of Global Terrorism, was
the closest approximation of any government effort to provide information
in an objective and consistent manner. As a successor to Patterns,
the report produced by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) --
called A Chronology of Significant International Terrorism for 2004 -- effectively
ends over 20 years of analytical consistency in the U.S. government's
terrorism accounting practices.

On US soil, there have been a total of zero terrorist attacks since 9/11.
In France, zero attacks. In Germany, zero attacks. In Portugal, zero attacks.
In Italy, zero attacks. In Europe, only Great Britain and Spain have suffered
since 9/11. In fact, the new world in post-9/11 looks strikingly similar
to the old world pre-9/11. There are as many terrorist attacks happening
around today as were happening before 9/11 with one great exception - where
the US has intervened in the affairs of other countries while 'fighting' this
war on terror.

Canada's Simon Fraser University in an independent study came to the
conclusion that death from terrorism is on the decline, and has been since
2001! They attribute this to the Global War on Terrorism and the lack of
support from Muslims to terrorist groups because of terrorist tactics (this
is not to say that many Muslims don't support the causes of terrorist
organizations).

The data used in these studies does not include Iraq civilian war casualties
like US government backed studies do. In many of the US backed studies Iraq
can account for more than 50% of the total deaths. This makes no sense. Iraq
is a war zone, and while the tactics and organizations suggest terrorism,
by definition terrorism can't really happen in a war zone. Now this
flies in the face of the Bush Administration's characterization of
the conflict in Iraq. The Administration likes to call insurgents terrorists.
But they are not. They are insurgents using terrorist tactics and belonging
to terrorist organizations. When these insurgents step foot on a battlefield
in a war zone they are no longer terrorists.

A study released on Wednesday reports a decline in fatal attacks of terrorism
worldwide and says U.S. think-tank data showing sharp increases were distorted
due to the inclusion of killings in Iraq....

For example, global terrorism fatalities declined by 40 percent between
July and September 2007, driven by a 55 percent decline in the "terrorism" death
toll in Iraq after the so-called surge of new U.S. troops and a cease-fire
by the Shi'ite militant Mehdi Army, the brief said.

The fact that the threat emanating from global terrorism is outrageously
inflated (between 2,000 - 4,000 die yearly worldwide from terrorist acts,
as compared to 50,000-100,000 deaths from snake bites, or 10,000,000 child
deaths from preventable causes) should give rise to serious questions regarding
the real motives of those who have initiated and currently pursue the "war
on terror".

Even according to utilitarian views, the deaths of 10 million children a
year would deserve the expenditure of at least 1000 times more efforts and
funds than to prevent the deaths of 2,000-4,000 people a year. The imbalance
in tackling these two scourges tells much about motive.

That's because in order to judge the magnitude of the threat, we need to
look at an array of indicators, not just total fatalities. Some of the criteria
are not even quantitative....

Numbers tell you about the plots that succeeded, but to gauge the threat,
we also need a sense of the jihadists' ambition....

More important, though, is the relative unimportance of numbers. It has
been clear -- and somewhat reassuring -- since the immediate post-9/11
period that al-Qaida was not going to mobilize vast numbers of Muslims to
take up arms against us. What matters, instead, is that it continues to accrete -- intelligence
services around the world report that the group is consistently picking up
recruits. Since terrorism is a problem of small numbers and large consequences,
this is the bad news. Indeed, one could go further and say that tragic as
the fatalities are in these statistics, almost all were strategically insignificant.
What matters are the strategically significant ones -- the catastrophic
attacks that may happen two, five, or 10 years apart. And that threat isn't
going away.

What is scary about statistically based arguments is that they tend to be
an invitation to complacency, and we have been there before.

This otherwise plaintive argument is very instructive:

It appropriately stresses the need to focus on an array
of indicators. This should of course be borne in mind when considering
any problem or threat. Notably of significance is the relative importance
of any threat in comparison with other real and potential threats. Clearly,
whilst focusing on the problem of "terrorism", inadequate attention
was paid to the indicators which resulted in an even greater disaster, namely
those relating to the financial system. Of relevance also are indicators
on the real capacity to act on any array of indicators, as discussed elsewhere
(Remedial
Capacity Indicators Versus Performance Indicators, 1981)

A case is made for looking at intentions rather than simply
at incidents alone. This argument should be borne in mind when considering
the actions of other social groups, whether it be political parties or corporate
enterprises. It is therefore not what they may have done as yet, but what
it is their intention to do. It is appropriate to note that "jihadists" are
sensitive to the intentions of Christian fundamentalists in this respect,
notably the
Great Commission. A
similar point might be made with respect to the controversial official Catholic
policy with regard to contraception -- and the number of people that suffer
and die as a consequence, notably in Africa (Begetting:
challenges and responsibilities of overpopulation, 2007).

A case is made for the relative unimportance of quantitative
indicators.
This should clearly be borne in mind in any discussion where reference is
made by environmentalists to the Precautionary
Principle -- such as with
respect to genetic modification of crops or nuclear reactor accidents.
Although this has not apparently been necessary in
the case of terrorism, curiously proving the numbers have been the focus
of attention in relation to climate change. Most important however is
the fundamental failure to process low frequency conditions relating to the
numbers associated with the Gaussian
copula (on which financial traders were so dependent) that resulted
in the financial collapse of 2008 (Cognitive
Ballistics vs. Derivative Correlation in Memetic Warfare, 2009) .
The issue had been highlighted by Nassim
Nicholas Taleb (The
Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable, 2007).

A case is made for taking account of qualitative indicators.
As discussed below, this is the primary characteristic of experiential "terror"
-- which escapes measurement (or consideration) in the current approach to
terrorism, despite frequent reference to a "climate of fear" and a "politics
of fear". (Ruth Rosen ,
Politics of
Fear, San
Francisco Chronicle, 30 December 2002; Frank Furedi, Politics
of Fear,
2005)

An appeal is made to evidence in reports from "intelligence
services around the world"
confirming the level of threat. The embarrassing feature of this argument
is that it is precisely such language -- epitomized by the statement
of
Colin Powell to
the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003 (with respect to weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq) -- which has proven to self-serving and without
substance, not to say simply duplicitous. It should be appreciated that
both the WMD incident and the financial meltdown have reduced the credibility
of such arguments to an extremely low level. They do not have a "AAA credit
rating" as might previously have been assumed -- in financial terms
they have the credibility of a "junk bond". Intelligence services have
created this situation by appealing to "national security" whether legitimately
or to conceal the weakness of the evidence they have -- and are now unable
to recover their credibility other than by fabricating incidents which
they can predict and forestall. "Terrorism" lends itself admirably to such
efforts.

Emphasis is placed on the importance of relatively rare catastrophic
future events, "two, five, or 10 years apart". This usefully
highlights the relevance of such criteria in the light of threats -- other
than terrorism -- which might otherwise be neglected. However it would be
important to avoid any implication that the evidence for the potential impact
of terrorism might be greater than the evidence for the impact of such other
events. The financial meltdown provides an instructive example on which evidence
was seemingly neglected whilst attention was focused on terrorism.

The emphasis placed on rare events, necessarily lending themselves to
more dramatic coverage in the media, highlights the challenge of distinguishing
between such "peak" problems and continuing "low level" problems.
Typically (as indicated below) the latter, even though of low
salience in the eyes of governors, may
be associated with more deadly fatalities and suffering amongst the governed
than the former.

Statistics on terrorism -- relative importance of other
causes of fatality

Various comparisons of some understandings of "terrorism" have been
made with other causes of fatality, notably for the USA.

Comparing official mortality data with the number of Americans
who have been killed inside the United States by terrorism since the 1995
bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma reveals that
scores of threats are far more likely to kill an American than any terrorist
-- at least, statistically speaking.

With that in mind, here's a handy ranking of the various dangers
confronting America, based on the number of mortalities in each category
throughout the 11-year period spanning 1995 through 2005 (extrapolated from
best available data).

'Injuries resulting from the unlawful use of force or
violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government,
the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political
or social objectives."

The National Center for Health Statistics, which tracks 113
causes of death in the United States, reported that in the same year that
nearly 3,000 people died in the Sept. 11 attacks:

43,788 died in motor-vehicle accidents,

30,622 by suicide,

20,306 were murdered (including 11,348 by firearms),

14,078 died by accidental poisoning and

3,021 died as a result of complications from medical care.

In addition::

700,000 Americans died of heart disease

553,768 died of cancer and

32,238 died of blood poisoning.

Statistics on terrorism -- specific comparisons

Comparisons of deaths from "terrorism" have been made with specific
causes of fatality.

OECD countries for which comparable data were available, the annual average
death rate from road injury was approximately 390 times that from international
terrorism. The ratio of annual road to international terrorism deaths (averaged
over 10 years) was lowest for the United States at 142 times. In 2001, road
crash deaths in the US were equal to those from a September 11 attack every
26 days. Conclusions: There is a large difference in the magnitude of these
two causes of deaths from injury. Policy makers need to be aware of this
when allocating resources to preventing these two avoidable causes of mortality.

According to the groundbreaking 2003 medical report Death by Medicine,
by Drs. Gary Null, Carolyn Dean, Martin Feldman, Debora Rasio and Dorothy
Smith, 783,936 people in the United States die every year from conventional
medicine mistakes. That's the equivalent of six jumbo jet crashes a day
for an entire year. But where is the media attention for this tragedy? Where
is the government support for stopping these medical
mistakes before they happen?

There are, of course, greater threats to humanity than terrorism. It is
telling, however, to compare how the United States allocates resources in
response to these threats. Approximately 3,000 people died in New York and
Washington as a result of terrorism in 2001. But that same year three million
people died worldwide from AIDS, according to the World Health Organization.

Curiously "terrorism" is dissociated from "violence" although
it might be assumed that much violence is associated with some form of terror.
In a period when there have supposedly been no incidents of "terrorism" in
the USA, it is therefore interesting to note the following presented by the
US Student
Peace Alliance (Statistics
on Violence):

In 2004, the World Health Organization estimated the cost of interpersonal
violence in the U.S. (excluding war related costs) at $300 billion a year.
(World Health Organization, The Economic Dimensions of Interpersonal
Violence,
2004)

In the U.S., youth homicide rates are more than 10 times that of other
leading industrialized nations, on par with the rates in developing countries
and those experiencing rapid social and economic changes. The youth homicide
rate in the U.S. stood at 11.0 per 100,000 compared to France (0.6 per 100
000), Germany (0.8 per 100 000), the United Kingdom (0.9 per 100 000) and
Japan (0.4 per 100 000). (World Health Organization, World Report on
Violence and Health, 2002)

During 2007, More than one in every 100 adults in America was in jail or
prison. Disproportionately, one in 36 Hispanic adults and one in 15
black adults was in prison, with one in nine black men between the ages of
20 and 34 in prison. From 2007-2008, the
prison population rose by more than 25,000 inmates, totaling 2.3 million
at the start of 2008, more than any other country in the world. China, four
times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6
million people in prison. Direct expenditures for corrections by local, state
and federal governments between 1982 and 2004 increased 585 percent to $62
billion per year, and rising. [Pew Center on the States, 2008, International
Center for Prison Studies at King's College London, International Herald
Tribune, Direct Expenditures by Criminal Justice Function, 1982-2004, Bureau
of Justice Statistics]

The same compilation indicates:

The World Health Organization declared in 2002 that violence is a leading
worldwide public health problem. (World Health Organization, World Report
on Violence and Health, 2002)

Worldwide, an estimated 1.6 million people lost their lives to violence
in 2000. About half were suicides, one-third were homicides, and one-fifth
were casualties of armed conflict. (World Health Organization, World
Report on Violence and Health, 2002)

In 1992, handguns killed 33 people in Great Britain, 36 in Sweden, 97 in
Switzerland, 60 in Japan, 13 in Australia, 128 in Canada, and 13,200 in the
United States. [Handgun Control Inc., cited in The Washington
Post, 1998]

Taking only the case of those imprisoned in the USA, with 25%
of the world's prisoners and one in every 31 adults in prison or on parole,
20% of inmates report having been sexually assaulted by guards or fellow inmates
(A Nation of Jailbords, The Economist, 4 April 2009). One might ask
what kinds of statistics on "terrorism" would exclude any degree of terror
from those practices. Or is the assumption made, as is so often made in the
case of rape, that those complaining typically invited the "rape" and therefore
are better understood as being themselves guilty of incitement to rape?

Statistics on terrorism -- fear

It is vital to note that the above mentioned indicators of "terrorism" make
no attempt to measure the degree of fear that people experience in daily life
when confronted by challenges which "terrify" them.

It is intriguing that the purported concern is with "terror" and
the associated
"fear" but that the response to "terrorism" is itself
recognized as engendering a "climate of fear" -- necessarily intangible
and unmeasurable. For example:

Far more people were killed in London by the IRA than were
killed in 7/7 or by al-Qaida. Did we erode our civil liberties then? No.
I really believe we have generated an unnecessary climate of fear.
He said a Russian friend had recently told him he felt under more surveillance
in Britain than he did in his own country.

In a BBC Reith Lecture, Wole
Soyinka (Climate
of Fear, 2004) argues that fear can be
bearable, even a force for good, for example bringing a community together
to fight a common threat from the natural world like a forest fire, "a
kind of fear one can live with, shrug off, one that may actually be absorbed
as a therapeutic incidence".

Other kinds of fear, though, are "downright
degrading". Crucially, they involve a loss of human dignity and freedom
to act. First we had the fear of nuclear war between the superpowers, now "the
fear is one of furtive, invisible power, the power of the quasi state, one
that is not open to any negotiating structure." "It is the unstructured,
the totally unpredictable, those that have repudiated the norm, refuse to
to be bound by the code of formalised states that instil the greatest fear." (Climate
of Fear : the quest for dignity in a dehumanized world, 2005)

A growing culture of fear triggered by widespread misconceptions about the
risk posed by threats such as crime and terrorism is exacerbating the economic
downturn and hindering recovery....
Fear is overriding logical thinking, while anxiety levels are rising as a
result of financial uncertainty, the report concludes. It suggests individuals
and institutions are avoiding risk, too afraid to invest, spend or lend,
creating economic paralysis.

Draws attention to findings of much greater cardio-vascular vulnerability
among people in most fear of terrorism, and asked 'Which is more of a threat
to your health? Al Qaeda or the Department of Homeland Security?'

It is curious that the increasingly fearful experience of daily urban life,
with the risk of violence, mugging and the like, is not associated with any
form of incidence of "terrorism". A knife attack in the street is not the subject
of "anti-terrorist" legislation or aggressive "counterterrorism" initiatives.

Terror
-- an ultimate intangible

Intangible fear : Any statistics on "terrorism",
however defined, necessarily focus on the measurable. Hence the concentration
on fatalities and other destructive impacts on the body -- or to a lesser degree
on structures. This is most curious since these are then treated as measurable
symptoms of the subjective condition to which the term actually refers -- without
it being clear what is the relation between these symptoms and that subjective
experience. Establishing any such a relationship has always been problematic.
Furthermore, if the fatalities are instantaneous -- as in many suicide bombings
-- then no terror may be experienced by the persons killed.

Even more intangible is the "intention" which transmutes the violent actions
of an urban gang, supposedly with no "political" purpose, into those of "terrorists"
inspired by some political agenda. This raises the challenging question of
when an intention becomes "political" -- in the light of examples such as strikes
against abortion clinics, or school shootings by the socially disaffected.

Little is said about the "terror" engendered by "terrorism" -- especially
when that very same "terror" may be engendered by actions that are not framed
as "terrorism". There are no measures or scales of fear -- of which "terror"
may be understood as one extreme of the spectrum. Unfortunately that spectrum
also includes the kinds of fear deliberately sought, as with a horror movie
or certain fairground rides. Extreme sports may be experienced -- and sought
-- as inducing a certain kind of fear providing an "adrenalin rush".

More subtle is the fear, even "blind terror", experienced by those who suffer
from certain forms of phobia. Fear of heights, open spaces, snakes, the dark,
public speaking, nakedness, etc.

The issue is further complicated with the involvement of others.
In its mildest forms this may simply result from being "surprised"
or "shocked" by the actions deliberately taken by others -- possibly as a
joke to be laughed at thereafter -- whatever the fear induced in the moment.
It may be induced by responding to a dare -- which typically requires confronting
a degree of fear. An individual may be cajoled into going to a horror movie,
taking drugs, engaging in some form of sex, etc -- all of which may require
confronting fear and may be experienced as "terrifying".

Intimidation: There is however a borderline when the actions
of the other are experienced as intimidation as in in many institutional settings,
notably involving hazing. Bullying is an effort to induce "terror" and to take
pleasure in the consequences. The borderline is most evident in bullying between
siblings which may indeed induce what is experienced as a high degree of "terror"
however much this is relativized by others as a necessary educational experience
-- "part of growing up". The matter becomes more problematic when the bullying
is transformed into the forms of intimidation to which the vulnerable (elderly,
disabled, etc) may be exposed -- whether or not the purpose of any threat is
to obtain money. The focus is however still on the actions of bullying -- and
not the subjective terror induced.

Dangerous driving: It is here that the case of dangerous
driving merits careful consideration. Whether or not the driver seeks that
outcome, the style of driving may "terrify" passengers, pedestrians
or the drivers of other vehicles. This is irrespective of whether the person
so terrified is actually endangered as opposed to believing that they are --
not recognizing the skill with which the fear-inducing driver has just avoided
any accident. It is difficult to see how dangerous driving may be dissociated
from "terrorism" given the number
of deaths which it may so obviously cause.

Dangerous driving is especially interesting because the driver of the vehicle
may have no intention of causing "terror" and may deny being a source of any
legitimate "fear" -- namely that any fear experienced is because the person
experiencing it is "soft" in some way. More interesting is the fact that many
eminent members of society, people of wealth, and fast car enthusiasts, would
see driving "fast" as a right and quite unrelated to any "terror" they may
induce. Just as "smoking" was experienced as offensive by some, and considered
a pleasurable "right" by others (denying perceptions of its problematic
consequences), so the cult of driving at speed is considered a right totally
unrelated to "terrorism". It took decades for the formal recognition of "smoking
kills". Whilst drunken driving is an offence, and is recognized as a prime
cause of accidents, it is not considered to be a source of "terror" -- falling
within the provisions of anti-terrorism legislation.

Especially problematic with respect to such legislation is the notion of "incitement
to terrorism". The question is how media presentations promoting the driving
of fast vehicles is then to be understood -- as a form of potentially violent
extremism, especially when it is closely related to promotion of alcohol
consumption. Again, in the case of smoking, efforts have been made to curtail
promotion of tobacco products because "smoking kills". The terrifying consequences
are not considered relevant to the promotion of fast vehicles -- despite the
statistics on road accidents.

State authorised terror: in-terror-gation and torture

Terror induced by security services: Whilst the terror induced by "terrorists"
has been the focus of the "war on terror", for those experiencing it such terror
may indistinguishable from that induced by the "forces of law and order". However
the terror experienced at the hands of such forces is not to be understood
as terror within any definition of terrorism -- irrespective of whether it
involves death of innocent parties ("collateral damage"), rape ("denied or
challenged"), wounding, destruction of property, etc.

Any definition of terrorism necessarily excludes the "authorised" terror induced
by government forces. It is questionable whether there is any legal concept
of such "terror"
since the experience is subjective and of no interest to those implementing
official directives -- who would challenge any such claim as irrelevant. Notions
of "just war" do not focus on the interface with inducing terror.

This is of course curious given the manner
in which weapons are designed to be used. Whilst they may cause fatalities,
wounds and destruction of property, the question of how they engender terror
is somehow dissociated from terrorism. On the other hand, there is a long tradition
of military action extolled as "striking fear in the heart of the enemy".
Terrifying the enemy is then totally desirable and legitimate.

Interrogation: These ambiguities are brought into focus in
the case of interrogation -- especially when assisted by torture. Curiously
in the extensive debate about the legitimacy of whatever is to be considered "torture",
the focus is on the physical harm and not on the induction of terror. Much
interrogation is however designed to induce fear -- "terror" -- as
a catalyst to the process of extracting information.

It might even be said that the art of interrogation is to induce the maximum
amount of terror without needing to resort to physical torture. The person
may of course be subject to sleep deprivation and the like in order to augment
as much as possible the level of fear experienced in a confused state. Inducing
a subjective experience of terror is therefore the key to successful interrogation.
The term might even be usefully written as it is pronounced -- "in terror
gation" as
the induction of terror by those in authority.

With respect to these issues, the current debate about the nature and
legitimacy of torture needs to be seen in the context of the legitimacy long
accorded to the processes of the Inquisition of
the Roman Catholic Church, as carried out by the Dominican
Order in the name of the Pope and with his full authority. A procedural
guidebook for inquisitors (Directorium
Inquisitorum, 1578) explains that:

"... punishment does not
take place primarily and per se for
the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in
order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they
would commit."

Instilling terror thus has a long tradition in processes of faith-based governance.
hence the interest in any debate on Is
God a Terrorist? (2004).

Terrifying alternatives and differences

There has been widespread discussion of the "politics of fear".
As with the sorcerer, power in society is maintained and enhanced by the ability
to induce fear. As with the sorcerer, the more nebulous that which can be held
to be fearful the better it serves this purpose -- occasionally "legitimated" by
incidents, whether themselves induced or appropriately interpreted. The problem
of the sorcerer is that it is impossible to substantiate this belief system
in any objective manner. It is an exercise in superstition. Efforts to substantiate
it cannot be distinguished from the myth-making that is otherwise used to sustain
it.

Curiously the cultivation of fear extends significantly, as in the most primitive
societies, to fear of difference and of alternative behaviour patterns -- which
have their own quite distinct fears. Alternative modes of organization and
differences of opinion are therefore to be feared as terrifyingly disruptive.
As such they need to be demonised.

The western world, in its desperate efforts to define and promulgate "universal
values" in its own image, is necessarily fundamentally fearful of any
possible alternative -- held to be credible by others. Hence the "clash
of civilizations".
Hence the rejection of alternatives to capitalism's "business as usual" --
beyond minimal corrective tweaking. This is as evident with respect to the
emergence of alternatives within western societies as in relation to other
cultures.

It is in this sense that any form of social unrest in protest against the
failures of "globalization" is increasingly made subject to the repressive
proscriptions of anti-terrorism legislation. Demonstrations in favour of alternatives
are conflated with "terrorism". Governments are "running scared",
as are corporations and the academic disciplines complicit in their modes of
organizations and mindsets -- and dependent on their funding. Of course "running
scared"
begs the embarrassing question as to whether such bodies could "run" if
they were not "scared". Mainstream institutions
may be appropriately said to be "terrified" of the complexities of
a dynamic global society. Hence the definitions of "others" as being
the source of such "terror",
namely to be recognized as "terrorists".

It is this that empowers western governments, most notably the USA, to deploy
historically unprecedented resources against a single country -- Afghanistan
-- as the epitome of "difference" intolerant of western lifestyles.
It is ironic that that country is the source of a drug which is much sought
at all levels of western society to compensate for inadequacies in those lifestyles.
More ironic is that no such use of resources is devoted to determining why
people need such compensation and the alternative experiences with which it
is associated.

Perhaps most to be regretted in a society dominated to such a degree by fear
is the inability to explore the nature of difference without seeking to eliminate
it. Every effort is devoted to achieving "universal agreement" on
a nebulous set of "shared values" that few would be able to name
or agree upon. Institutions like the European Community are totally focused
on "harmonisation". The United
Nations is focused on "normalisation". The challenge of working
creatively with differences -- rather than simply tolerating them -- is not
the focus of any significant resources.

To the extent that governance is increasingly highly influenced by faith-based
considerations, it is important to consider the degree of existential terror
to which religion offers a response -- if not as the "opium of the people"
(Thinking
in Terror Refocusing the interreligious challenge from "Thinking
after Terror", 2005). This existential terror may prove to be
intimately related to the terror in process of being engendered for the future
as "demand" exceeds availability of resources. Here "demand" is the acceptable
euphemism for a challenge whose name cannot be spoken in any international
arena -- overpopulation.

Afghanistan as the greatest source of terror on the
planet

The decision in March 2009, despite decades of experience by overconfident
military experts, is that further military resources should be allocated to this
arena as the prime source of "terror" on the planet. The argument above endeavours
to show that the definition of "terror" is carefully crafted to lend itself
to any such justification. In the terms current at the time of the debate regarding
the Blair government's decisions on WMD, it is a "dodgy dossier" which has
been "egged up".

And in these discussions... I can assure you, and through you everyone
who's watching, that every single option was considered, its pros and
cons.

It is far from clear what other options were considered -- or where they are
identified, or how such options were collected for consideration --
especially given the process of groupthink whereby options were collected in
support of the case for invasion of Iraq, and the analogous assertions made
by Colin Powell to
the UN Security Council in 2003. One option presumably not considered, for
example, is engagement through poetry (Poetic
Engagement with Afghanistan, Caucasus and Iran: an unexplored strategic opportunity? 2009)
-- but then why should it be?

Unfortunately, in the light of the above argument of the Brookings Institution,
it is indeed important to consider "intentions" in placing the military
option in context. Factors of relevance might then include, whatever their
relative significance:

value of military action in a distant isolated arena to enable unconstrained
testing of unconventional weapons, especially those which are defined as
inhumane by international conventions, and cannot be effectively tested otherwise

value of such an arena to train military forces under realistic conditions
for action elsewhere, and notably in preparation for expected social unrest
within the USA and NATO countries in general

value of such action as a source of employment in an economy characterized
by historically unprecedented levels of unemployment

opportunity of reducing prison overcrowding, and ensuring
availability of somewhat expendable military personnel, by offering a degree
of clemency to certain classes of prisoner if they agree to enroll for military
duty

value of expenditure on military equipment as a means of providing a disguised
bailout to defence corporations in a distressed economy

as a distraction from failure, or unwillingness, to act on other issues
-- or on the same issues (such as the treatment of women) in other
countries with which it is vital not to disrupt diplomatic relations

ability to focus on eliminating a primary source of drugs used in the western
world
and
notably in the USA -- otherwise promoted as normal and desirable within
all classes of society, thereby demonstrating in a most embarrassing manner
the need for existential relief from its inherently unsatisfactory lifestyle
pressures

displace onto an external enemy the responsibility for the "terror" of
the underlying threat of the internal of propensity for such drug use (to
values and way of life) -- an internal threat currently contained
by unprecedented levels of drug-related incarceration in the USA

facilitating access of Christian propagandists to Islamic
communities in fulfillment of the proselytizing commitment of their Great
Commission -- as was previously the case when Franklin
Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham (advisor to a succession of presidents,
and one of the USA's most outspoken critics of Islam), indicated that
he had relief workers "poised and ready" to roll into Iraq to provide for
the population's post-war physical and spiritual needs (Crusaders
sending in missionaries after the Blitzkrieg, 2003; Christianizing
the Enemy, 2003)

the need for a distant and radically dangerous "enemy" in order
to sustain the viability and coherence of modern approaches to governance,
as remarked in the case of the USA by various commentators, possibly as the
only device that holds increasingly disparate forces together

the need to demonstrate, if only for internal purposes, unquestionable
military victory with a semblance of honour, especially in response to an
enemy that echoes the creation mythology of the USA and the victories
over the wild people in the western "badlands" as heroically
mastered by its early pioneers

the continuation
of the "great game"
of strategic rivalry with Russia
to ensure a sphere of influence in Central Asia -- via NATO -- and notably
to block Russian access to the Indian Ocean

Strangely it can be credibly
argued that if it was the intention of al-Qaida to ensure that the western
world lived in a state of constant fear or terror then its strategy has
been surprisingly successful. However its achievement of it has been
largely the work of western governments, especially the USA and the UK, in
framing a "war
on terror" and exaggerating its threat in comparison with any other challenge.
They havw thereby effectively introduced a "reign of terror" epitomized
by the range of security devices now considered essential for the maintenance
of law and order in freedom loving democracies.

It is most curious that a David and Goliath situation should have been created,
in which the USA has been rendered fearful to such a degree --
triggered with such limited resources by a group of people living in the
most distant backcountry of Afghanistan. This says much about the level of
insecurity within the western world and the USA. Is it any wonder that there
is a despersate need for the opium that Afghanistan is so willing to provide?

Future historians may explore the extreme irony, and profound psychological
impact, that those targeted with unprecedented firepower in the badlands of
Afghanistan are garbed in ways that few westerners would be able to distinguish
from the dress of those central to its central biblical myths as depicted in
Christian churches. This is especially true with respect to the "most wanted"
person, whose capture is vital to any honourable declaration of "mission accomplished".

Conclusion

It is clear that "terror" is what a person experiences as "terrifying".
What is to be understood as "terrorism" -- the process in which others
engage in inducing this experience -- remains quite unclear. There are tangibles
which can be counted as symptoms of the induction of terror but these may not
encompass the subjective experience -- notably in the event of instantaneous
death that leaves no time for the experience of terror.

An interesting challenge to the process of definitional game-playing and conceptual
gerrymandering is
the question of whether animals experience "terror" or may in any sense be
"terrified" -- and therefore potentially victims of "terrorism". This would
of course be vigorously denied by significant constituencies. However many
animal owners, and those with experience with animals, would affirm the contrary.
Of particular relevance is the work of Temple
Grandin both on autism and as a consultant on animal behaviour in slaughterhouses
(Animals in Translation: using the mysteries of autism
to decode animal behavior,
2005; Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best life for Animals,
2009). Arguably the dominant attitude to the irrelevance of the experience
of terror by animals is analogous to the attitude of government to the legitimacy
of any terror induced in those they consider a securityy threat. The understanding
of future extraterrestrials in this respect will be most enlightening.

The collection of statistics on "terrorism" is clearly completely
problematic and not based on any defensible methodology. The framing of "terrorism" is
a purely political process, including that which is held to be dangerous and
unacceptable in a given period and excluding that which is held to tolerable,
however terrifying it may in fact be to some. Unfortunately, as with the officially
confirmed data on the "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, statistics
on
"terrorism" might be caricatured as "WMD" -- Wonderfully
Massaged Data, perhaps understood as based on Wonderfully
Massaged Definitions.
Given the rapidly eroding credibility of institutions and authorities of every
kind, it is quite unclear who might be able to present credible statistics
on the nature and extent of "terrorism".

Ironically a measure of the sense of terror experienced may in fact be the
amount of defensive equipment that a person or a society requires. In this
sense the USA might be understood as the most terrified society, whether in
terms of its military armament, its bunkers, the proportion of the population
believing they need to own arms, or the proportion incarcerated. The extent
to which a society is terrified might also be measured by the security systems
on their dwellings or their need to reside within gated communities -- appropriately
protected by security services.

Identification of such tangible measures of terror might
extend to the number of bodyguards felt to be necessary by an individual. This
would lead to the most extreme irony that the person held to be the most powerful
on the planet is actually the most terrified -- or that it is believed that
he ought to be by his entourage. Furthermore, by this measure, the increase
in the level of terror over time -- in the most democratic of societies --
might then be simply measured by the increase in number of bodyguards required
by successive holders of that office when they travel outside their compounds.
The "terrification quotient" of a global summit might even be measured by
the proportion of bodyguards to active participants.